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Mikhail Langovoy’s Biography

I am an accomplished Statistics and Machine Learning Researcher and a Data Scientist with 17+ years of research and business experience at top Universities, renowned private Research Corporations, and successful Startups.

I was a machine learning researcher at leading research labs both in Industry as well as in Academia, worked as a statistician with world’s top statisticians, and was a mathematician at top math departments. These institutions produced Nobel Prize winners in Economics and Physics, Fields Medalists in Mathematics, and Turing Prize winners in Computer Science.

Main direction in Machine Learning

I am leading academic and commercial research on Machine Learning and Data Science for large-scale connected intelligent systems.

Within this area, I am particularly interested in machine learning for Advanced Manufacturing and the Internet of Things for Industry 4.0. This is one of the strategic focus areas for Switzerland, where I lead machine learning research on a long-term national project “Nano-Assembly”, collaborating with major Swiss and international manufacturers.

Other areas of my work include smart environments research, automated analysis of social, telecom, and political networks, automated analysis of biomedical images and of personalized healthcare data, and optimal configurations of neurons for Deep Learning applications.

Innovations for the European Union

Prior to my current position, I was at the Federal Institute of Physical and Technical Affairs in Berlin, Germany (which is the Germany’s National Institute for Standards and Technology and the highest technical authority of Germany).

I led data science and machine learning research within the European Union-wide Industrial Research Program xDReflect of the European Association of National Metrology Institutes.

Among the participants, there were 12 research institutes from 10 countries, and more than 30 industrial partners from 13 countries worldwide, representing 10 different industries, such as automotive, paper, printing, packaging, cosmetics, coatings, plastics, and steel industries, as well as electronics and e-commerce.

The results obtained by teams under my guidance, are being used to set new fundamental visual quality standards and guidelines for manufacturers in the European Union. This is expected to lead to improvement of appearance of goods in dozens of industries, improving competitive position of European businesses with multi-trillion combined annual turnover.

Management experience

In the areas of Machine Learning, Data Science, Statistics, and Applied Mathematics, I managed, advised, supervised and consulted researchers, engineers, and software developers, from over 20 departments of 17 National Research Institutes, research Universities, and commercial companies, in 9 countries.

Since 2001, I interacted with over 100 business units and governmental institutions worldwide, and led Business Intelligence R&D department in one of the most successful European startups of the early 2000s.

For teams of data scientists or researchers, I find work directions with the highest impact, train colleagues so that they up their knowledge to the state-of-the-art in the field, organize productive collaborations and, as a result, elevate the team’s work to the next level of efficiency.

Teaching and mentoring experience

I am an expert in communicating ideas from machine learning, statistics and mathematics, as well as in presenting the data analysis results to technical and non-technical audiences, and delivered more than 50 invited talks at conferences, academic institutions and commercial companies from 13 countries.

Since 2000, I have taught data science-related subjects to top students in Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Among the students in my classes were multiple medalists and winners of the International Mathematics Olympiad, as well as of the International Mathematics Competition for University Students.

Two of my former students already became professors, and one was recently awarded a Fields Medal.

In addition, I have led official EPFL courses and trainings on Applied Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Data Science, for Swiss and international corporations.

Hands-on work

As a hands-on researcher, I enjoy inventing, developing and applying novel statistical and machine learning methods that are optimal for specific application areas. My algorithms are always validated and supported by theory.

I published over 20 full-length articles in top-ranked international journals and conferences in statistics, mathematics and machine learning, including single-author publications.